The Greenlanders - Jane Smiley [360]
Now in this summer, which was according to most calendars the summer of 1415, another thing happened that was worth talking about, and that was that some men who had a large boat, large enough for twenty rowers, declared that they intended to leave Greenland and seek Markland and Vinland. These were Brattahlid men and Dyrnes men for the most part, and one of them was the fellow Harald Magnusson, who had carried Margret across Einars Fjord when she was on her way to Gunnars Stead. The boat would carry, it was said, fifteen men and five women, and necessary household furnishings and lambs and calves past the weaning stage, and it was not intended that these folk would return to Greenland, and that was the unaccountable thing about it. Folk speculated for a long time as to whether Harald and his friends would carry out their boast, and it happened that they did, and after they were gone, folk looked for them to return all through the summer, or for the pieces of their boat to be washed up on some strand or another, but such a thing never happened, and so folk did not ever learn of the fate of Harald Magnusson and his little boat, except through such dreams as they had from time to time. Such tales as folk remembered of Erik the Red and his son Leif the Lucky, and the bishop Erik, and Thorleif the Magnificent, and Hauk Gunnarsson, and others who had made the Markland journey through the years were brought out and renewed, and folk were disquieted by them, for indeed, Vinland is a great paradise of forests and vines and self-sown wheat, where men may rest from their labors from time to time, and all folk long for such a place if they are brought to think of it.
It may be said that things went on quietly now for some years. Larus the Prophet was the lord at Gardar, and Sira Eindridi and Sira Andres were his servants, no more than that, and though these two continued going out to the churches in the winter, as priests had always done, folk were less inclined to attend the services, so changed were they from what had been. Many said that now there was no hope of salvation, for a man might do anything and be in the wrong. There was no way to tell. It was better to stay on the steading and mind the cows and be content with such days as are left to one and cease to wonder about life everlasting. If disputes arose, then men must settle them or fight about them, and if men are killed in these fights, then the disputes are settled in that way. Some folk even stayed away from the seal hunts, if they felt like it, because it could not be said whether the seal hunts were profitable or not. The Brattahlid folk nowadays always brought the ill luck of their witchcraft controversies with them, and it seemed to many that they bewitched the seals, or the boats, or the other men, so that something was always lost. It was better to keep one’s boat at home. There were few enough of them, after all. But it was true that every farmstead was the hungrier for not going to the seal hunt, and every Lent the longer, and every family the more hard put.
The folk at Gunnars Stead grew older. Jon Andres Erlendsson married Johanna Gunnarsdottir, and she gave birth to two children. It seemed to Gunnar that folk were thinly scattered over the ground these days, and he began to think that Birgitta Lavransdottir had been right, that the end of the world was upon the Greenlanders, at least. Perhaps it was upon every nation and people, but indeed, there was no way of finding out, except through such dreams as came to folk. In Brattahlid, folk were embroiled in conflicts and killings, and this was true to a degree in Dyrnes, also. Vatna Hverfi folk shunned contact with these others.
In Vatna Hverfi all was peace. The sun rose each morning, and shone upon the riot of flowers that grew around the middens, and blanketed the homefield. It turned the fjord green and the lakes blue, and a man could stand at the edge of these and see the shimmering copper of their bottoms glowing up through the